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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
August 25, 1999
Anti-Semitism in America
By Dennis Prager
No Jews died in this month's anti-Semitic attack on a Jewish
community center in Granada Hills, Calif., and it wasn't the
first act of violence against American Jews. Yet the reactions
of many Jews to this terrible event have been extraordinarily
dramatic. "Wake up, America!" warned a newspaper advertisement
last week from the Anti-Defamation League. "Fight anti-Semitism,
hatred and prejudice." On the Saturday after the shooting,
I was stopped by guards at my own synagogue, not far from Granada
Hills.
The Granada Hills attack conjured up memories of European pogroms
and the Holocaust--memories that gnaw at every Jew, atheist or
Orthodox, left or right. The ADL is right: America must combat
anti-Semites--who come in all colors--with the same sense of
national purpose it had in fighting the Nazis.
But America's Jews must be careful not to panic, not to let memories
of slaughtered Jewish children cloud the reality that America
remains the most tolerant, open and Judaism-loving country Jews
have ever lived in. Too many Jews still believe what their European
grandparents believed: Scratch a non-Jew, and you'll find an
anti-Semite. But America is different. America's Christians are
not the Christians of Europe past.
Because of Europe's history of Christian anti-Semitism, many
American Jews instinctively oppose any public expression of Christianity.
This opposition has had a corrosive effect on American life.
Sectarian Protestantism, a uniquely tolerant form of religious
expression, has been the conduit of American democracy. It has
created a uniquely secular government and a religion-based society.
American Jews must stop devaluing the Judeo-Christian basis of
America. Without that basis, the moral glue that binds our diverse
civilization will crack, and moral chaos will ensue. The weakening
of Judeo-Christian values makes America a less moral place, and
one more hospitable to hate groups. When moral norms break down,
Jewish security will erode.
When American Jews reflexively oppose any public affirmation
of Christianity, they weaken their fellow Americans' attachment
not only to Christian values, but to Jewish ones as well. Jewish
organizations that work against posting the Ten Commandments
in schools, to take an example, not only are helping to conceal
the moral creed that underlies American civilization; they are
working to rescind the greatest Jewish gift to America and the
world: God-based moral law.
The shibboleths of "tolerance" and "diversity" are
no substitute for Judaism and Christianity as the moral bases
of America. Tolerance is important, but it's insufficient as
a moral guide. Tolerance is amoral; it needs to be morally directed
or one can never know what should be tolerated and what should
not be tolerated.
The emptiness of tolerance and diversity becomes clear when we
consider the question of anti-Semitism. The problem with Jew-haters
is not that they are intolerant and don't care for diversity.
A desire to see Jews dead--the uniquely defining characteristic
of anti-Semitism--is what moves anti-Semites. To keep replaying
the mantra of tolerance and diversity is to avoid confronting
an evil that far transcends intolerance.
Intolerance of diversity explains why gentiles once barred Jews
from country clubs or devised quotas to limit the admission of
Jews into universities. Such acts were surely bigoted, but real
anti-Semitism is simply evil. And if we continue to teach about
tolerance and intolerance instead of teaching about good and
evil, we will end up with tolerance of evil.
The more America substitutes the values of tolerance and diversity
for Judeo-Christian values, the less secure American Jews will
be. Jews have never been merely tolerated in America. Despite
our small numbers, we have been full partners in the historic
endeavor to build this country. When Judaism and Christianity
are supplanted by tolerance and diversity, America's Jews will
become nothing more than an increasingly small minority to whom
few of their fellow citizens feel special ties--and Israel will
be seen as but another small country.
All racial and ethnic hatred is evil. But Jew-hatred is different.
It amounts to hatred of America and its Judeo-Christian soul.
Only if America's gentiles recognize this--and if America's Jews
recognize that their security depends on that Judeo-Christian
soul--will Granada Hills remain an aberration. In Europe, the
seeds of modern Jew-hatred were laid by centuries of Christian
anti-Semitism. In America, the seeds of anti-Semitism are laid
by a rejection of Christianity. In this way, too, America is
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